Palestinians, both at home and abroad, have found an unlikely partner in the struggle against colonization: First Nations, the indigenous peoples of Canada.

Native peoples from all over the world joined together on Monday as part of an international day of solidarity with Idle No More, an indigenous uprising that has supporters across the globe.

[…]

For 34-year-old Vancouverite Mike Krebs, a student of political geography who has indigenous Blackfoot ancestry, the connection between the Palestinian and indigenous Canadian struggle is a “natural one.”

Krebs met his extended Blackfoot family, who still live on a reserve in rural Alberta, the same year that the second Palestinian intifada began. That was a coincidence, he says, that gave fuel to his activism.

He remembers attending a talk in Vancouver by Israeli human rights activist Jeff Halper in 2001.

“He showed us a slide of different maps of Palestine – one from pre-’47, one from ’48, ’67 and 2000 – and that’s when the connection clicked for me, this image of a shrinking land,” Krebs says.

In Vancouver, Krebs collaborated with Palestinian activist and academic Dana Olwan to produce an article for an Australian journal called “Settler Colonial Studies,” comparing Canada and Israel. “We were just naturally interested in each other’s struggles,” he says.

From Haaretz.